Get outside this weekend

This is it. The issue we’ve been working toward all summer. As frequent readers will notice, Coast Weekend has a new look and logo. Read more

Have you ever wondered what certain coastal locals or the people who lived there once looked like? Read more

The outdoors help center us, connect us to our surroundings and, at best, provide a respite and improvement to our daily lives. Read more

Last week, a little more than a dozen community members representing diverse organizations gathered in the Flag room at the Astoria Library to discuss with editors the best ways to get their news in the The Astorian and Coast Weekend. Read more

Hearing a piece of music played in total darkness is a truly singular experience. Read more

Most people who live in the Columbia-Pacific region are often faced with the question from friends out of the area: what is there to do in Astoria/Ilwaco/Cannon Beach? Read more

On a recent morning run, I stumbled across something quite remarkable and worth stopping for. Read more

I thought I knew a few things about the American Legion as I did some brief research and prepared my questions for my interview with the executive director of the Columbia Pacific Heritage Museum in Ilwaco a few weeks ago. Read more

Summer is nearly here. With long days full of cool mornings that turn into warm, blissful afternoons and celestial sunsets, it’s the most exciting time on the North Coast. Read more

By Jonathan Williams Read more

When I need a reminder of why I got into the business of storytelling, the candid, confessional, two-hour discussion among Get Lit at the Beach’s guest authors is like a call from mission control. Read more

For many of us, the Buffalo Soldiers — the black servicemen who joined the U.S. military after the Civil War and helped stabilize the American West — are a historical blind spot. Apart from their sporadic appearances in pop culture courtesy of Bob Marley and Danny Glover, their contributions… Read more

In the late stages of gathering materials for Our Coast Magazine 2019, as production drew near, photographer Colin Murphey and I felt the first prickles of panic. Read more

Amid the kaleidoscopic blur of colors, compliments, cheese, crackers, loose conversations and winey revelry of a recent Astoria Art Walk, my attention was seized by a calendar for sale in the Pier 11 Building. Read more

How easy it is, when you’ve lived in an area long enough and the novelty starts to wane, to suddenly stop exploring it. I am fortunate, though, to have people in my life who sense when my routine may be calcifying into a rut, and politely pull me out of it. Read more

For decades, Duane Bolster, a harp builder from Portland, tried to learn one instrument after another — piano, clarinet, coronet, accordion — but reading music remained mysteriously difficult for him. He couldn’t comprehend how musicians sight-read so fluidly. Read more

Poems, stories and personal essays presented at the annual FisherPoets Gathering often ask: How can humans live in balance with the natural world, what do we lose when we don’t, and how do we communicate this message in a society running on self-interest and short attention spans? Read more

The Feb. 21 of Coast Weekend is devoted to the 22nd FisherPoets Gathering, with two profiles — Sierra Golden and Tom Hilton — a full feature and, in the print edition, an eight-page program insert for Gathering-goers. Read more

The Feb. 14, 2019, special issue of Coast Weekend reveals the winners of the 2018 Readers’ Choice contest — the annual celebration of the best businesses, dining options and activities in the Columbia-Pacific. Read more

In the darkness, I bobbed supine on a 10-inch pool of water inside a chamber 8 feet long, 4 feet wide and 4 feet high. Read more

You’re at a well-attended event. The featured entertainer has wrapped up, and it’s time for the Q-and-A. You’re looking forward to a satisfying denouement. Read more

Arnie Hummasti had two brothers. Read more

In an artist statement for a new series of abstract landscapes titled “Discover Solitude,” Ryan Dobrowski refers to the paintings as a search for a “moment of discovery.” Read more

Coast Weekend now serving foodie features. Read more

Help us cover the Columbia-Pacific. Read more

A short list of book recommendations. Read more

Christmas confession: “The Muppet Christmas Carol” is my favorite holiday movie. Read more

The Daily Astorian’s Edward Stratton got it into his head recently that we writers should do karaoke together sometime. He’s been using it to venture outside his social comfort zone, he said. Good on him. Karaoke, if nothing else, forces you to care a lot less about what others think of you. Read more

Over Thanksgiving weekend, while staying at the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport, I came upon a preciously rare sight: a roomful of strangers silently reading. Read more

In the early 2000s, director Gus Van Sant wanted to use the Flavel mansion on Franklin Avenue and 15th Street in Astoria in his film “The Last Days,” an art-house look at the slow, pathetic decline of a Kurt Cobain-type musician. Read more

Cheese and I have a complicated history. Read more

Focus, people! Read more

A comedian, almost by definition, has had to overcome hurdles. “You wouldn’t become a comedian if you didn’t,” said Rachael O’Brien, a stand-up comic from Los Angeles, invoking the pain-plus-time-equals-comedy formula that governs her profession. Read more

My recent email exchange with Kim Stafford, Oregon’s Poet Laureate, was one of those interviews in which every response could be turned into a story, the deleted scenes as compelling as the feature presentation. Read more

Last fall, with well-meaning doubters informing me I’d made a huge, possibly life-threatening mistake by signing up for the Great Columbia Crossing — the 10K race across the Astoria Bridge — the challenge was simply to survive with my knees and dignity intact. (In the end, both were wobbly, … Read more

When I met some of the “Ghost Adventures” crew last April, they were playing the blues at Uniontown’s Workers Tavern — a sound engineer on guitar, a writer/editor doing vocals and harmonica, a cast member pounding the djembe. Read more

In the Feb. 15 special issue of Coast Weekend, we reveal the results of the 2017 Readers’ Choice Awards, our annual contest honoring excellence in Columbia-Pacific business, dining and activities — as chosen by you, our discerning readers. Read more

Earlier this month, I reconnected with Professor Prakash Chenjeri, the chair of Southern Oregon University’s philosophy program who, along with chaplain and author Fred Grewe, led a community talk at the Astoria Library about what makes life meaningful. Read more

Coast Weekend’s 2017 Photo Contest opens Friday, Nov. 17, and closes Sunday, Dec. 17. Read more

A friend asked me: You’re running the race? Like, running it? Read more

If natural selection, the driving force of evolution, really depends on whatever set of traits makes an organism more or less likely to reproduce and pass on genes, where does altruism come in? Why does anyone work to benefit others at his or her own expense? Read more

Good comedy is famously known as a high-wire act. Timing, tone — everything must be finely calibrated for a show to be funny, for it to actually work as comedy. Read more

’Stackstock — an indie music festival held Saturday at Haystack Gardens in midtown Cannon Beach — rocked. Plain and simple. Read more

When you read the title “Dog Gone: A Lost Pet’s Extraordinary Journey and the Family Who Brought Him Home,” what do you imagine this book is about? Read more

Coast Weekend is hiring freelancers to write one to three stories per month and help paint the arts-and-entertainment landscape of the Columbia-Pacific region. Read more

By now, many of you have read the recent Willamette Week story “Astoria is the Best Place in Oregon For A Weekend Bender” by Matthew Korfhage. Read more

A feature story this week focuses on Arvi Ostrom, an Astoria man who owned and tended a bar in Uniontown while, unbeknown to his loved ones, he drew thousands of striking pictures before his death in 1995 (see Page 6). Read more

When I learned last week that Mary Todd, owner of Mary Todd’s Workers Bar & Grill, had agreed to sell the tavern to Astoria author Diana Kirk, my reaction was something like: “No way!” followed by, “That’s perfect.” Read more

John Patrick Shanley’s “Doubt, A Parable,” a play showing in Nehalem and the subject of this issue’s cover story (see Page 8), is a unsettling piece of theater, and not simply because it involves whether a priest molested a boy at a Catholic school. Read more

I finally got around to reading “The Mountain Shadow,” Gregory David Roberts’ long-promised sequel to his gorgeous 2003 debut novel, “Shantaram.” Read more

My writing first appeared in Coast Weekend on July 21, 2011, when I worked as The Daily Astorian’s summer intern. It was a “Shanghaied in Astoria” preview — a centerspread I proudly laminated, framed and mounted on my bedroom wall as if it was a fresh kill. Read more

It’s time to vote! The 2015 Coast Weekend Readers’ Choice Awards are here. Read more