Arts & Culture

Best of PDX

Your Quintessential Portland Bucket List: 50 Things to Do in Town

These are our city's can't-miss activities, whether you’ve lived here all your life or are just passing through.

9:00am By Portland Monthly Staff

Bookshelf

Local Authors on the 2025 Portland Book Festival Lineup

Jonathan Hill, Emma Pattee, Leah Sottile, and Leni Zumas share who they’re looking forward to seeing at this year’s fest.

7:00am By Matthew Trueherz

Seeing Things

Things to Do in Portland This Week, October 2025

With Barry Bostwick, Rocky Horror takes over the Schnitz, and other events in town.

10/23/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

Book Review

Romance on the Basketball Court in Play You for It

The debut novel from sports journalist turned romance author Samantha Saldivar hops between Portland and Eugene.

10/22/2025 By Margaret Seiler

Costume Party

The Best Halloween Parties in Portland 2025

Summoning the dead? Looking for a risqué ball? Want to dance at Holocene? There’s a fright night party for you.

10/21/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

At the Museum

A Bike Path Now Runs Through the Portland Art Museum

PAM’s $111 million expansion is named for Mark Rothko instead of a benefactor and designed for Portlanders over tourists.

10/20/2025 By Matthew Trueherz Photography by Michael Novak

Things to Do

A Grimm Play for a Grim Period in History

A dystopian play of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses," and more events in town.

10/16/2025 By Isabel Lemus Kristensen

Movies

Oregon-Made Halloween Flicks to Watch This October

From a Disney Channel original to an ’80s Daryl Hannah slasher, these homegrown horror films will spruce up your spooky programming.

10/15/2025 By Conner Reed

Gimme Five

The 5 Ursula K. Le Guin Books You Need to Read, According to Her Son

While curating an exhibition of her life and work, Theo Downes-Le Guin shares his favorite books by Portland’s greatest author, a.k.a. his mom.

10/14/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

things to do

Tom Toro and Dracula Both Come to Town

Also: Louise Bourgeois and Isabelle Albuquerque at the Lumber Room.

10/09/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

Interview

Portland’s New Yorker Cartoonist on the Important Kind of Jokes

In a new book, Tom Toro collects 15 years of work for the magazine. Here, he talks about the role of cartoons in the present.

10/08/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

bookshelf

The Ursula K. Le Guin Cat Book You’ve Been Waiting For

A new collection gathers the late author’s poetry, sketches, and correspondence about her beloved feline companions.

10/08/2025 By Alex Frane

things to do

A Posthumous Book from Geek Love Author Katherine Dunn

Also: Demetri Martin, and other events in town this week.

10/02/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

Halloween

Visit These Portland Haunted Houses For Halloween Pregaming

Haunted manors, zombie graveyards, and spooky drive-ins to get you in the most frightful of moods.

10/02/2025 By Portland Monthly Staff

theatergoing

Portland Center Stage Opens Its Community-Focused 2025–26 Season

The theater company fundraised millions to stay afloat. Loaded with Pulitzer winners and a Little Women adaptation, its current season looks to pay forward the love.

09/30/2025 By Isabel Lemus Kristensen

Spooky Scary

Inside Oregon’s Largest Haunted Attraction

Oaks Park’s ScareGrounds began as a COVID-safe drive-thru fright fest. Now, it’s a Halloween season destination.

09/29/2025 By Brooke Jackson-Glidden

Time Warp

50 Years of Rocky Horror at the Clinton Street Theater

Portland’s favorite single-screen theater hosts the longest continuously running movie of any theater, anywhere.

09/26/2025 By Matthew Trueherz Photography by Michael Raines

things to do

Cinema 21 Celebrates 100 Years

Also: Judy Collins, and other events in town this week.

09/25/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

things to do

Disney’s The Lion King Returns to the Keller

Also: Andrew Bird, and other events in town this week.

09/18/2025 By Matthew Trueherz

Bookshelf

A Novel of an Anarchist Nursing Home Run by 1970s Punks

Leni Zumas’s Wolf Bells is a spirited, hilarious, and tender study of intergenerational living.

09/15/2025 By Matthew Trueherz