Scenes From Lunch

I didn't take nearly as many pictures of the North American Street Newspaper Association conference as I should have, and all but three of them sucked. The guy above was at the Portland State University farmers market where we had lunch Saturday. He had his Rogue Creamery booth next to the artisan bread people that I bought my little olive roll from, and I asked him if I could just buy enough cheese for lunch. His smallest quantities were about twice what I wanted. He thought a minute, and poured some of his cubed jalepeno samples into a little plastic tub for me, and then refused to take any money for it. When I insisted, he motioned to my NASNA conference badge and said, "No, you do good work." It kind of made my day. The cheese was awesome.

The photo below is three guys from Vancouver, BC that I worked with over lunch to help them think through their relaunch of Street Corner, the paper there. Is it just me, or are Canadians way nicer than we are? Anyway, what's been a struggling and sleepy paper has received a huge injection of energy and support, and they're looking to take the thing up several notches to make it more like what we do here in Seattle. We had a great conversation that ended too soon, but I'd do anything for these guys. When I took their picture, I asked them for a hipster band pose and they pulled it off brilliantly. Look for a cool new paper in Vancouver soon. These guys rock.