Sunday in Portland was a most hopeful day. So hopeful that precipitation was taken to mean future daffodil rather than hair mess as I walked here and there downtown.

"Here" was Research Club at Tribute Gallery. With the event scheduled to start at 11, I snuck in around 12:30 to find the gallery full to the brim with folks eating brunch and chatting with the formal proceedings not to begin until 1. Score. This iteration of Research Club was a mashup of salon and Pecha Kucha/Ignite/Interesting Portland lecture. (See also: the Lecture Series.) According to RC’s Nim Wunnan, Research Club sometimes means dinner, sometimes synesthetic events and/or football games. The website says, "The point of Research Club is to help inquisitive people and their ideas meet other inquisitive people and their ideas," which is right up my alley.

Sunday’s highlight for me was finally hearing Amber Case do an abbreviated intro of her ideas on Cyborg Anthropology, as well as Kawandeep Virdee talking about Pattern Language and a love letter to Portland, and Rafael of Eggy Records talking about his cassette tape-only label and distro. Christine Taylor of Igloo Gallery talked about their new artist’s residency project in 2010, first hosting Colin Mathes, and Mike Merrill talked about his project as a publicly traded individual.

"There" was The Cleaners at the Ace Hotel where Publication Studio (Matthew Stadler and Patricia No) hosted the Publication Fair with lots of small presses as well as purveyors of great printed matter. The place was packed, and according to No had been all day! I finally picked up a full set of poet/editor Sam Lohmann’s superb lit. ’zine Peaches & Bats, had a great talk with designer/author Mark Searcy (see his beautiful visual blog), caught up a bit with Diana Kim of Stand Up Comedy (loved the Scott Ponik-designed poster series for SUC), and thumbed through a couple of copies of Veneer. Also, renewed love of IPRC.