Thursday. Sunny today with a high of 86. The burglar who took a cup of urine to the face along with three bullets was just awarded $0. The massive pile of tires dumped on a man’s property starts clearing out. Familes will be taking the kids to Grant Park tonight for a family friendly concert. Sorry- weird question, but do you ever just have a cup of urine in your hand when a burglar breaks in? There’s a lot more here and we’ll get into it, but that part just really kinda… huh.
🚨 THE NEWS
One man, 100,000 tires, a baler
Khanh Tran owns a stretch of southeast Portland property that somehow accumulated 100,000 tires over the years, and he's finally doing something about it. Tran teamed up with a Salem recycling business to learn tire baling, compressing the tires into transportable blocks instead of hauling them out one at a time. Oregon's Department of Environmental Quality has been watching the site. Slow work, but it beats a mountain of rubber going nowhere. KATU
Jury awards $0 to burglar shot three times
A Portland jury took only a few hours Tuesday to reject a homeless burglar's $10 million lawsuit against the business owner who shot him. Kenneth Voyles broke into Touchstone Granite & Marble in the pre-dawn cold of March 2023, prying a board loose and cutting through metal bars. Owner James Grant, who lived in the building, confronted him, threw a cup of urine in his face, then grabbed a gun and shot Voyles three times. The jury sided 10-2 with Grant. "The laws are bad," Grant said. "It's just not fair."Yahoo! News
Portland's thirstiest lawns, ranked
Willamette Week's annual water-guzzler list is out, and this year's crop is thirstier than ever. The alt-weekly tracked the 21 biggest residential water users in Portland and Dunthorpe from June 2025 to May 2026, using records from the Water Bureau and Palatine Hill Water District. Context: this is a wildfire summer that's already burned more acres statewide than any prior year, and Portland recently logged the worst air quality of any major city on Earth. One $2.6 million home on the list left a reporter at an empty front door, nothing inside but a parquet floor and a piano. Willamette Week
🪴 PLANT CLUB SPOTLIGHT
East Portland Plant Club is a backyard plant buying club that makes gardening more affordable by purchasing plants, seeds, bulbs and gardening supplies in bulk and passing the savings along to local gardeners. I run it from my Gold-certified Backyard Habitat in East Portland, where I host open gardens and neighborhood pop-up plant sales on second Saturdays, along with a Potting Shed where gardeners can get hands-on help.
📚 ON THIS DAY
Connie McCready, born in Pendleton on August 20, 1921, became Portland's 46th mayor in 1979 after years on city council. She died in Portland in 2000.
🥳 UPCOMING EVENTS
