The artist known as Suspish won the Best of Eugene readers poll for Best Local Artist. We’d like to also nominate Suspish for Best Local Artist the City and Police Should Celebrate.
Suspish, in addition to their graffiti around town, has had T-shirt collabs with St. Vinnies and Springfield’s The Block Party and has fans all around Eugene and Springfield — including the art collectors of Chaos Vineyards who have a Suspish Fish in their art collection. We’d like to nominate Suspish — who painted last week’s EW cover and whose work in progress is this week’s cover — for a graffiti amnesty!
Welcome to Eugene Weekly’s annual Staff Picks issue, where after we let the readers have their say, in Best of Eugene, we have some fun with some other things we’d like to celebrate! — Camilla Mortensen
Best Place to Catfish Your Friends
Styr Kurbside Kitchen
Catfish is a tricky thing to pull off. It’s not hard to make a mistake that could alter the fate of a whole dish. To quote Homer Simpson, “If something’s hard to do, then it’s not worth doing.” Luckily, you don’t have to go far to enjoy catfish. Just head over to Styr Kurbside Kitchen for a trustworthy hand at preparing catfish. The restaurant tells Eugene Weekly via Facebook that the catfish continues to be a bestseller, and people often tell them that it’s the best catfish this side of the Mississippi.
To celebrate this Best Catfish, it’s time we reclaim what it means to catfish someone. Sorry Catfish: The TV Show, but it’s a term that should no longer mean deceiving someone online to scam or defraud. Catfishing is now converting someone to the wonders of the dishes at Styr — the catfish po’ boy sandwiches and the Cajun catfish basket. And if they still don’t give in, that’s OK. Styr’s menu shines with the gumbo, mac and cheese, and chicken and waffles. — Henry Houston
Styr Kurbside Kitchen is at 152 28th Street, Springfield. Open 11 am to 7 pm Wednesday through Sunday, closed Monday and Tuesday. Facebook.com/styr.kurbside.kitchen.
Best Drive-Thru Coffee Shop for the Girls
If there’s one thing that every girl knows about life, it is that Sip Happens
To be a girl is to need a sweet treat. To be alive is to need a sweet treat. Sip Happens isn’t just any pink drive-thru coffee shop. The drinks are exquisite bombs of sugar and stardust. Whipped cream, chocolate, peanut butter, candies, caramel drizzle and sprinkles make your beverage a work of art. You want more chocolate? They got you. Of course, there’s also matcha, Red Bull, iced lattes and everything else that makes the world go ’round.
Ashley Serna opened Sip Happens in June 2025, but the way people post about it, you’d think it had been around forever. The shop is built on “women empowerment and inclusivity, and making sure that everyone feels welcome,” Serna says.
And the staff keeps it that way. “It’s a safe space for everyone to come. And if they’re respectful, they’re welcome. And if not, then they’re gonna probably hear about it from us.”
Sometimes, you’re tired from carrying the world on your back all day and you just want a cute little drink. That’s no crime. It also has probably the greatest menu on the planet as far as drink names. The 2026 Christmas (sorry, Sipmas) specials include “Gobble My Cobble” and “Peppermint Pop Off Queen.”
The absolute best part about it, is that it’s parked right next to mega-coffee corporation Black Rock. So when you choose the small pink coffee cart, you’re also making a statement that Serna loves to promote: Hot people shop local. — Savannah Brown
Sip Happens is at 1380 West 7th Avenue. Open 6 am to 2 pm daily. For more information visit SipHappensLLC.net or @sip.happens.llc on Instagram.
Best Place to Get a Matcha Latte, Buy Some Meat and Write a Message on a Manual Typewriter
Horai is actually your grandparents’ coffee shop
While tooling around Portland, where he lives, my 31-year-old son discovered a manual typewriter. Fascinated with all things mechanical, he bought it and decided to lug it down to Eugene on the train when he came to visit earlier this year. He was happily punching the keys at a local café while waiting for me to pick him up when a barista approached him and told him he’d have to stop. The coffee shop had a strict policy: No typewriters allowed.
So imagine my delight when I stopped at Horai in downtown Eugene not long after that to get a desperately needed matcha latte and discovered not just an espresso bar, but a throwback marketplace, where shelves stocked with local products and coolers filled with meat and fresh produce line the walls. There are plenty of spots to sit and enjoy your cuppa and a confection. But what caught my eye was the manual typewriter on the counter, inviting customers to have at it.
“Wow,” I thought, “a place where my son and his prehistoric word processor would be welcome!”
Each month, The Society for the Appreciation of Typewriters drops off a different model for customers to try. At Horai, typewriters aren’t just allowed. They’re encouraged. — Jody Rolnick
Horai is at 345 East 11th Avenue in Eugene. Hours vary and can be found at Horai.Farm. The Society for the Appreciation of Typewriters can be found at SocietyfortheAppreciationofTypewriters.org.
Best Chicken in an Antique Mall
Retro Rejuvenation
I have a confession. I made a huge mistake. May this mea culpa be a reminder of the dangers of making assumptions, emphasis on the first three letters — ASS.
As a photographer working through my list of portraits for the Best of Eugene awards, I photographed the wrong business.
The assignment? Photograph the Coburg Antique Mall in Coburg. The phone number went to a fax machine. Well it is an antique store, I reasoned. So, I drove north to Coburg to what I thought was the correct place and announced to the surprised owner, Lyndsie Denton, that I was there to make her portrait.
Her response? “May I include my chicken in the photo?”
Turns out the store has a mascot: an odd-looking hen named Vlad who rules the roost at the shop. Vlad is a turken, also known as a naked neck chicken. While very sweet, the hen looked like a cross between a turkey and a buzzard.
I fell in love immediately. Vlad sealed the deal by laying an egg while I set up for the photo session.
Vlad and Denton proved to be photogenic subjects. Owner and bird posed patiently as I adjusted my lighting and tried different angles.
The shop offers an eclectic mix of antiques, curiosities and collectibles. A soapbox derby car, a plastic Big Boy statue and a Star Wars land speeder join jewelry, clothing and furniture in the overflowing store.
A few days after the portrait session I bragged to a Coburg friend about how well the photos turned out. She replied, “Are you sure you photographed the right antique shop?”
Well as a matter of fact, I did not photograph the right antique store. Coburg Antique Malls, the Best of winner according to local voters, is located a block over on South Harrison Street.
Sadly the photo of the antique shop owner and chicken seemed destined for the cutting room floor.
But wait! The editor at Eugene Weekly liked the photograph so much, she asked, why not feature it in the “Staff Picks” edition. All I had to do was reveal why I picked the store?
Because Vlad and Retro Rejuvenation deserve the ink. — Chris Pietsch
Retro Rejuvenation is at 32697 East Pearl Street, Coburg. Open 11 am to 4 pm Wednesday through Sunday. For more information call 541-954-3011 or visit Etsy.com/shop/retrorejuvenation.
Best Place to Get Stuck In Traffic Because You Forgot the Ducks Were Playing
Ferry Street Bridge
We’ve all been there: It’s a Saturday and you realize you need something from a store on Coburg Road. So, you get in your car and drive onto the ramp from West Sixth Avenue. As soon as you make that left hand turn onto Coburg Road, you realize — there’s a University of Oregon football game.
Out of nowhere, there is a line of cars stretching the entirety of Ferry Street Bridge. Even worse, you have to get onto Martin Luther King Boulevard. Good luck, you’ll probably be there for the next hour, at least.
Cars are honking, people are trying to merge at the last minute and someone cuts you off. Now here you are, 45 minutes later. Your phone died because you forgot your charger, so you’re stuck listening to the radio.
You sit there, wondering where your life went wrong, when suddenly, you see an escape. The left lane on Coburg Road across Ferry Street Bridge is open. A miracle. You put on your left hand turn signal and jet over into the next lane.
Finally, you reach your destination and you realize: You have to go back across the bridge to get home. If you’re lucky, it’ll be clear. But often, it’s not. And that’s the beauty of Ferry Street Bridge on a Saturday during football season.
If you’re not a football fan and don’t keep track of when the games are, it is a gamble each time you round that corner on the ramp leading to Coburg Road. It’s this gamble that makes the Ferry Street Bridge truly the best place to get stuck in traffic. — Eve Weston
Best Place to Make Friends With a Vegetable You’ve Never Heard of
Bee Loved Farm
I’ll be honest: I could use more vegetables in my life. Since I started stopping by Bee Loved Farm, I’ve met more new vegetables than I expected and picked up easy ways to work them into my meals. There’s no such thing as a stupid question at this booth. Christina Bentrup always takes the time to talk about bees, veggies and ways to make our community better.
Her produce is some of the best grown around here, raised with regenerative soil practices because she’s thinking about the land long after this season’s harvest. She looks out for the little guys too, and her bees get the same care as everything else on the farm. That care reaches past her booth at the Lane County Farmers Market. She grows for food banks and is always finding new ways to show up for her community.
Her table is full of culturally significant vegetables, and she lights up when someone teaches her about a new one.
What gets me most is how she makes people feel. Everyone is welcome at her stand, and everyone gets the same warmth. The carrots are charismatic and the honey is sweet, but Bentrup is the reason I keep coming back. You really do leave feeling bee loved. — Kenzie Wong.
Find Bee Loved at Lane County Farmers Market and BeeLovedFarmCommunity.com.
Best Liminal Space
Gateway Mall
Maybe you watched the recent horror movie Backrooms, or maybe it was Season 3 of Stranger Things and its Starcourt Mall, or you just are a fan of spaces that feel just a little bit uncanny. Liminal, as every anthropology student knows, is the state of being “betwixt and between” — neither here nor there.
Picture an empty office space at night, where the lights are still on but the emptiness just feels a little eerie. Or an empty water park where the water is still running, but no one is there. It’s these kinds of spaces that really do feel like a weird, intermediate place, a sort of purgatory.
If you’ve ever been inside Gatewall Mall recently to see a movie at Cinemark Eugene Springfield, you’ve walked through what’s probably the most liminal space of all. In fact, this isn’t the first time Gateway Mall has received notoriety for its liminal-ness. ActuallyIsNoah, a local influencer, included this spot in a list of “places that feel like you’re not supposed to be there” spaces in an Instagram video.
This wide-open, empty place is seriously eerie. Footsteps echo against the bare walls and the ceiling towers above you all the while you walk into the only thing that’s left inside: the movie theater. What used to be a bustling, classic late ‘90s-early 2000s mall is now an empty shell of what it used to be. That’s what makes it the best liminal space in Lane County. — Eve Weston
The inside portion of Gateway Mall (Cinemark Eugene Springfield) is at 2900 Gateway Street and is open Monday through Sunday. Hours vary by screening time. For more information, visit Cinemark.com.
Best Bakery to Go to After Being Ghosted by a Political Candidate (Twice)
Creswell Bakery
We’ve all passed that sign on the way to Cottage Grove. An almost menacing billboard informs you at 60 miles per hour that if you take the exit now you’ll end up at Creswell Bakery.
I first went after visiting Amber Smith’s Cottage Grove home. EW copy-editor and my best friend Bayla Orton and I got on the road, coffee-less, at 8 am for the peaceful drive down the I-5 listening to the radio.
“So what do we do if she answers?” Bayla asks.
“Say WTF,” I respond.
“Are you scared?” she asks.
I wasn’t scared. But I did launch into a cycle of thought about what our journalists put themselves through for a story. The information, the addresses, voting records, it’s all out there, who’s gonna look at them? If there was a chance to see Smith I was going to take it goddamnit.
(If you want to hear the end of the story you’ll have to go read “Amber Alert” in the Oct. 22 Eugene Weekly.)
With more time on our hands than initially expected, Bayla and I took a backroad up to Creswell Bakery. We were greeted by the smell of fresh baked bread and pastries, freezers full of ready-to-bake hand pies, and a discounted bottle of wine.
Both of us got ham and cheese croissants for $4.65. The salty cheese and ham encased in a sweet and flakey pastry was just what I needed to fuel a story lacking a key interview. — Grace Mangali
Creswell Bakery is at 182 South 2nd Street, Creswell. Open 7 am to 6 pm Monday through Saturday, 9 am to 3 pm Sunday. CreswellBakery.com.
Best Place to Take Your Visiting Parents
Oak Street Vintage is a mom wonderland, while the Glenwood Denny’s serves as respite for dads
Eugene has no shortage of entertainment, including drag, nightlife, alternative scenes and tons of dispensaries. But when your parents come to visit, most don’t want all that noise. They just want to buy you some food and complain about the football season. If you’re in a pickle about what exactly to do with them, it’s easier than you think.
Take your mom to Oak Street Vintage. Located just past the Market District, this vintage shop specializes in every Gen-X and above mom’s kryptonite: high-end mid-century modern furniture, decor and clothing. The prices are up there, and since she traveled she might not buy anything. But she’ll wander around in adoration, fawning over the imported European coffee tables, admiring the lamp varieties and dreamily picturing the handmade pottery bowls in her kitchen.
When you’re done, the Farmer’s Union Coffee Roasters cafe and the Down to Earth Home and Garden shop are both right next door.
The dad version of this wonderland is the Denny’s in Glenwood. Located right between a Motel 6 and a Chevron, your blue-collar dad will feel right at home (dads love gas stations). There’s the lovely view of the I-5, exceptional service and any time of day, he can just as easily get a T-bone steak as he can a stack of pancakes. Plus, it’s the filming site of the famous “Hold the Chicken” scene in the 1970 Jack Nicholson movie Five Easy Pieces (and dads love Nicholson). — Savannah Brown
Oak Street Vintage is open noon to 6 pm Wednesday through Monday at 500 Olive Street, closed Tuesdays. Denny’s is open 24 hours at 3652 Glenwood Drive.
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Best Farm Stand in Business for More than Half a Century
Hansen’s Garden Goodies
When you’re at least a semi-vegetarian, buying vegetables becomes a big part of your life. And buying vegetables at supermarkets is a crap shoot. Sometimes they’re vaguely fresh looking, but more often they reek of days in the container ship from South America
So the discovery of Hansen’s Garden Goodies, just a bit east of I-5 on the edge of Creswell, has been a delight. Two sisters, Timeri and Cassedea Hansen, work a farm stand that has been run by their family since 1975. I enjoyed their fresh corn, green beans, peppers and potatoes all last summer and into the fall. They also sell bags of filberts, though they call them “hazelnuts” (OK, we’re not going to comment on that obscure naming controversy). Shopping there is as friendly as visiting old friends, and the prices are great. The Hansens are also gradually expanding. They ran a giant pumpkin maze for Halloween, and they’re talking about soon putting in a food cart next to the small stand.
Of course the produce is seasonal — and that season is over this year, so the stand is closed — but do keep them in mind when gardens start to produce again next spring. Be sure and tell them EW sent you! — Bob Keefer
Hansen’s Garden Goodies, 33933 East Cloverdale Road, Creswell, is closed for the season. Find them (and their hazelnuts) at HansensGardenGoodies.com.
Best Place to Get Shot With a Tear Gas Canister While Doing Your Job
Eugene Federal Building
In January and late February of this year, federal agents violently cracked down on anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters outside the downtown Eugene Federal Building. On Jan. 27, a peaceful protest was interrupted by federal agents throwing a flashbang into the crowd, then exiting the building, making several arrests while shooting pepper balls and tear gas at the fleeing protesters.
In addition to all the protesters who were hit, several people covering the events were journalists, including photographer Dan Morrison, several student journalists and yours truly. We were also struck by the pepper balls and puking from the gas that day.
Three days later, a second protest was declared a riot by the Eugene Police Department after a window was broken. In response, federal agents again fired pepper balls, tear gas and more.
Approaching protesters in the plaza, the feds fired pepper balls and tear gas canisters directly at the crowd, striking several people. I was hit in the stomach with a tear gas canister.
A day later, on Jan. 31, approximately 20 peaceful protesters outside the Federal Building were met with similar results: more tear gas and pepper balls. Several protesters reported that federal agents were “aiming for the head.” Agents also fired tear gas canisters across the street from the Federal Building, into the county parking lot folks fled to for safety.
It’s these events and more that win the Eugene Federal Building as the best place to get shot with a tear gas canister while on the job.
An honorable mention goes to the parking lot across from the University of Oregon’s Prince Lucien Campbell Hall, where former Eugene Weekly reporter Henry Houston was struck in the chest by a tear gas canister, injuring him during a May 31, 2020, Black Lives Matter protest. — Eve Weston
Best Worst Contest that We Shouldn’t Suggest Bringing Back Because It Pisses People Off
Sexiest Bartender
Up until about a decade ago, Eugene Weekly used to have a Sexiest Bartender category in Best of or the Swizzle issue. Voters chose and we interviewed them.
A couple months ago, EW floated the idea of bringing it back. Our Millennial and Gen Z staffers were like “Hell yeah, let’s bring sexy back.” So we asked about it in Slant and in our EW Asks online readers poll.
Ouch. My bad guys, Sexiest Bartender is problematic. Or is it? OK OK it is. Unless? — McKenzie Young