61 thoughts on “The Scribe – Portland’s 70s Underground Newspaper”

1. Groovy post. I like your dedication to all things Portland! Though I’ve only read ‘History of St. John’s’ and this post, I’m compelled.

2. What a great find. Great find.

   1. A stack of them? Damn! it makes me giddy just thinking about it! Looking forward to more…

3. The Scribe was preceded by another alternative paper, Willamette Bridge (1968-71), but I don’t know of any connection between them.

   1. I remembered the Willamette Bridge but I don’t remember the Scribe at all.

   2. The connection was that Michael and Mary Wells founded Willamette Bridge and after it foundered, the founded the Scribe.

4. The Hockshop Tavern! Today that’s the home of the Architectural Heritage Center.
   http://www.visitahc.org

   1. Do you remember THE QUESTING BEAST (and it’s Honey Mead wine)

5. There were several people, and certainly the spirit of the time, in common between the Willamette Bridge and the Scribe. The Bridge was far more disorganized and unprofitable.

   The Scribe lived for years in a house on about 28th and Belmont – I think still there. Michael Wells was the man.

   Portland was a podunk town then. Having sideburns and drinking tea downtown was walking on the wild side.

6. Great post. And, where are those Portland Scribers? Those folks still have to be in town, right?

   The reason why I ask is my group, The Community Exchange Network of Portland (CEN|PDX), Showcase PDX, and Portland Bright Neighbor are aligning to build a coalition – leaders of the “The Chlorophyll Movement!” Green just isn’t enough, you know?

   One of our objectives is to align with a local newspaper to begin reporting the hyper local sustainable news. We’re interested in talking to the Portland Alliance, Portland Upside, Street Roots, etc. But, I think we would also love to talk to the founders of the Portland Scribe, and even the Willamette Bridge if they can be found. If anyone has any information, please send me an email asap!

7. Portland, 1973. I remember it quite well. I was 21, a vagabond sailor stationed aboard a Navy ship being refit in a shipyard on the Columbia. Being from St. Louis, I was quite taken with the Pacific climate and the mountains. The people, friendly and welcoming, made my eight months there more than pleasant.

   The area downtown by the University was alive with young, intelligent kids and I hung out in that area a lot. It was there that I read the Scribe for the first time. While I was in the military, I was intrigued and enamored with the politics of the times — and the Scribe provided fuel for an eager and hungry mind.

   Hunter S. Thompson’s F&L in Las Vegas was ricocheting in my cerebellum that summer; Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre made October particularly electric. I never met the writers and editors of the Scribe, but their words made my stay in Portland much more vibrant.

   Yes, I remember the Scribe, 1973 and Portland. Fondly and with some reverence. In 37 years, that time still dances within the little stage of my mind.

8. I read the Scribe during those important, formative years of 12-14. I have no doubt it shaped who I am.

   I remember one column called Touch and Go that had a surreal and random tidbits. Ads for record stores, heads shops like the Ides of March, and the bar Darcelle XV.

   Yeah, just looking at those examples I listed I see how it really DID influence me, along with Alan Watts lectures on the radio on Sunday mornings.

   It would be cool if entire issues were viewable online somewhere. Lots of work, though.

9. We lived way out beyond Oregon City, but my Dad worked in Portland. Occasionally, I would talk him into letting me ride in to work with him and spend the day at Lloyd Center, which was a wonderful treat for a 13 year old country girl. Things I would always pick up during the day would be a little decorated petit four from the Rotary Bakery at Lloyd Center, some candy from the Nut Hut (I think it was called that) across from Meier & Frank and a copy of the Willamette Bridge paper. The paper was my first realization that ideas and life in general coexisted among people, but sometimes on entirely different levels. It made me think of things that I knew previously knew nothing about and certainly expanded my horizons. I wish I would have kept those issues!

   1. That place across from M & F was Morrow’s Nut House! I went there @ 5 days a week as my mom was the personal secreatary to Gordon of Gordon’s Fireplace Shoppe (and the mall was a great way to occupy a kid-Toyland!!!)-one of the earlier tenants of the Mall…I miss the old Lloyd Center and all the Rose Festival and Christmas activities that were headquartered there…Mannings, the original Joe Brown’s Caramel Corn, Sandy’s Camera’s and the Van Duyn shop…as well as the first Made in Oregon, Marios and the Pancake Corner…too generic now.

      1. Yum Manning’s. The granddaughter Heidi Manning has all the original recipes, but no plans for revival.

      2. M memories of Lloyd Center are on the bitter side. That was a neighborhood almost exclusively occupied by people of Japanese descent. Most of them owned their homes. When they were firced to sell and leave in WWII, the property became available for devlopers and I’ve always been suspicious about this happy cirucmstance tha permitted developers to build our first shopping mall. Sort of a phoenix rising from someone else’s ashes.
         I do remember Manning, the Nut House, and how about Mr. C’s Hippopotomas?

   2. Morrow’s Nut House.

10. I worked on the Scribe briefly in 1977-78 as a typesetter and music reviewer. It was a crazy, dying organization trying to sustain itself through benefit concerts. Lots of strange characters were attracted to the paper. Some of the covers were insane – there was one of Nixon holding a machine gun, implying that he had something to do with JFK’s assassination. Good times!

    1. I edited and wrote for the Scribe in ’76 and ’77, left by ’78.

       1. Manny did you know Arthur Honeymoon or Laura Friedman?

11. I worked at the Scribe around 1974,,,,honestly, all I remember is that our meetings were very long because it was a collective and we all had to agree. About everything. That usually took a very long time.
    Really….I can’t remember anything else.

12. Wow… So nice to find your site. Thank you!

    I actually was Googling (unsuccessfully, alas) the old Center Family Restaurant… it was on Morrison, I think, up around 12th, and roughly across the street from the Contact Center (dulcimer festivals on the 2nd floor of Arbuckle Flat!).

    Tonight, I made my famous hot avocado sandwiches for dinner, and – yes – I trace them back to the Center Family Restaurant. Lovely people (a commune up in La Center, I believe), astounding bread, and a printed cookbook that I clung to for years & that I’d love to be able to find again.

    Any thoughts of scanning & posting some of those Scribes?

    1. There was a kind of hippie bar on the corner of 10th and Morrison,I think, that me and my friends use to go to. It had live music,mostly acoustic. No one can remember the name and it’s driving me crazy. We use to go there around 1973-74. It is an Indian restaurant now and was Mexican before that. Does anyone remember the name. Thanks for digging back into the cobwebs. I was hoping the Scribe or Willamette Bridge would have an ad.

       1. Michele (5/4/2011)
          I think @ the corner of 10th and Morrison was the P C & S Tavern. As a hippie it was a great discovery and emerging musicians. I walked and drank my way from THE PURPLE EARTH in N.W…….don’t forget BESAW’s, Clyde’s Navy Bean Soup and Ham Sandwiches……and an occasional sighting of JUNGLE JAMEY…..oh yeah.

    2. Yes I have been trying to google the Center for quite some time. You are right about the location. I wanted to find someone who worked there. We liked the sandwiches and the peasant meals with soup and homemade bread. I was trying to find out what they used in their soup that made it taste so good. It didn’t matter what the vegetables were in it – like what
       they had on hand but it was unique.

    3. I worked at The Center Restaurant…owned by Harvey Freeman who was the “Minister” at the Center for Truth Sunday Services…also spent many happy times at The Center for Truth Family Ranch is La Center, WA Those were the best of days!✌️❣️

13. If you want more background you should interview Lee Perlman, who wrote for those papers and is still writing about Portland week in and week out.

    1. Lee Perlman died a year or two ago

14. I’m a 60 yr. old bohemian who’s moving to your area soon.Been there before,stayed in a hostel in U district,really liked the area.
    I’m looking for a studio apt. or share in one of the old houses around there.I got injured,and on pension so can’t afford “high rent,utilities,etc.”
    Anybody have any suggestions that can help me out,or know of a place contact me @ = thewalrusclub@gmail.com

    Thanks

15. The Portland Scribe was a great little underground rag and it lasted longer than 1975–in fact, until 1977 for sure and a little in ’78. I was a Scribe contributor and the production offices were in the Centenary Willbur Church, which later became the Pine Street Theater, and in those days houses many “Movement” offices, environmental groups, a cafe and a theater group. Every Thursday night a raggedy group of writers, artists, typesetters and other ne’er do wells got together for an all-nighter Production Night–working with waxers and X-acto knifes and type until the paper was “put to bed” in the morning and ready for the printer. The paper had a decidedly counter-cultural, sub-cultural angle on the news, non-mainstream but not necessarily “hippie” since it also reflected a punk ethos in 1977. It had underground comics (comix?), politics, and a great bar & tavern guide. I wrote for the paper and did cartoons, and can still remember the smell of hot wax and burning leaves that surrounded the workspace. The Willamette Week presented itself upon arrival as an alternative weekly, and I guess it was alternative to the Oregonian, but we thought of it at the time as hottub journalism for West Hills yuppies. Funny how time flies when you’re having fun. — Bob Rini

    1. Bob, me and a friend of mine from Hillsboro, Greg Oslund, once found ourselves helping a hep-cat sell copies of a paper called the Williamette Bridge. I know it didn’t last long, till 1971 I think, but what I saw of it- it lived up to the term “radical press.”

    2. I’m looking for Sonya. she worked for the Scribe in 75 or 76 as a writer. She is from NY city. My Jewish cheese cake maker in Berkeley. I miss her. It’s been to many years. She moved back to the Bronx I believe. If you know call me, Please, Bill Moller 831 336 2766

    3. Hi Bob —
       I remember you. It’s Manny Frishberg, came back to edit after the disaster with the folks from PSU Vanguard (I don’t recall their names) came in in ’77 and nearly killed the paper in six weeks.
       I’m in the Federal Way (Seattle area) phone book.
       BTW, I have 2030 issues of the Scribe.

16. The Portland Scribe was started by Michael and Mary Wells: Michael, IIRC, went on to become the manager at KBOO radio. The paper had close ties to KBOO, which was across the street at the time. I did radio shows at KBOO and also wrote (not much) and did pasteup at the Scribe – for a while, a lot of the calendars were my layouts. I remember David Calhoun (now in Seattle and the person who got KBOO started) taped my radio show (Sunday nights, about 9-11) one night. Then instead of shutting the station down, he put the tape on broadcast, and we went across the street to paste up The Scribe while listening to the show. We finished at about the same time as the show, which ran 3 hours that night. Good old fashioned pasteup, with a paintbrush in melted wax in an electric frying pan. Everything got typed on an IBM typewriter with proportional spacing so that it would look like typeset. David and I rented rooms in Michael and Mary’s house for a while. It was a pretty tight alternative community. Good times.

17. I lived in Portland in the 70’s and loved the Scribe! I remeber it as the first place I read “For Better or Worse”. But I was looking it up just now because it was also where I read a column…and poetry…by Ralph Friedman. Wishing some of that material was available. Is it out there anywhere?

18. I worked on both the Willamette Bridge, in its last year 1970-71, and the Scribe, in its first two years 1972-1974. Michael Wells was the founder of the Bridge, although temporarily living away from Portland in the year I joined the paper’s staff. And he was founder and moving spirit of the Scribe from 1972-74, when he joined (temporarily) the Willamette Week. He and his wife Mary, then in their later 20’s, were the “elders” in the operation — most of the rest of us were in our late teens or early 20’s. The Bridge was truly a hippie/anarchist effort, an ethos which unfortunately did not pay enough attention to the bottom line, which did not help pay the rent, the printer, or the contributors (staff made some money by selling copies of the paper in warmer, drier months on street corners, but that was the sum total of our pay.) We survived as long as we did because the photo-offset technology was a remarkably cheap way of printing a paper.

    The Scribe had a slightly more professional ethos, with a designated editor/s (at first Michael Wells, and later a triumvirate of Michael, myself, and Doreen Labby), and salaries for editors, reporters, and typists (I think I got $5 a week, when it was available — while making my real income as a proofreader for the Oregonian).

    The important thing about both papers is that, in the aftermath of the collapse of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1969, these “underground newspapers” (as they were called at the time) were the closest thing to a New Left movement organization that Portland had in the late 1960s/early 1970s — at once intensely local, but also national in their concerns, in contact (via Liberation News Service and the Underground Press Syndicate) with other underground newspapers and radical groups across the country, a source of information about goings-on elsewhere, and the place to turn to spread the word about protests, organizing projects, and radical perspectives on the news. A lot of very interesting people wrote for the papers — among them local college students and professors, college drop-outs, hippies, Vietnam vets — folks who went on to a variety of careers as political organizers, professional photographers, union officials, academics, clergy, and lots of other useful vocations.

    The writing was better in the Scribe (there was actually some attempt at editing articles), but of the two papers, I think back more fondly on the Bridge, which had a wild, naive, idealistic ethos, very much in the spirit of the times.

19. Hi Everyone,
    I’m writing an Encyclopedia Of Jerry Garcia Music Venues.
    I’m looking for a photo of Beaver Hall. It was located at 425 NW Glisan Street at NW 5th Avenue, Portland, OR. Does anyone have one?

    1. Did you ever find a photo of The Beaver Hall?

20. Anyone know where the Portland Acid Test was held? Imperial Roller Rink or Beaver Hall?

21. I was about to re-cycle my remaining Dec. 1972 issue of te Scribe when it occurred to me that someone here might want it. If so,email me at mopalia at gmail dot com.

    1. I would love to have it! Can you please send it to me at 48 Washington St Apt 64, Santa Clara CA 95050. Thanks!

       1. You are ridiculously close to me. Rather than trusting the mail (I have had horroble luck with packages getting lost and/or severely damaged lately), is there any chance you could pick it up at 3553 Ryder, Santa Clara? A block from the Lawrence Costco. I’m there every Sat, 10-4 (the Digital Game Museum).

       2. Sounds good! I’ll meet you there Saturday at the Digital Game Museum. Cheers,
          Bruce

22. I worked at the Scribe around 1974, 1975, first as typesetter then “managing editor.” Typesetter was the only paid position at that time, and you had to type the entire paper every week. Good times. I remember Mary Wells, and Martha, and a couple others. Martha was awesome, very dedicated. Sorry to hear of Lee Perlman’s passing. He was in charge of distribution. I felt like he held the hold thing together. I have all the issues from the weeks I edited. The big event was Marty Rosenberg’s exclusive interview with then Trailblazer star Bill Walton after he was connected with Jack Scott, one of Patty Hearst’s kidnappers. I also remember Michael Gilmore bringing in his weekly music reviews before he wrote an article for Rolling Stone about his brother Gary and got a permanent job as one of their main writers.

23. I was a regular reader of the SCRIBE. You are the person holding the key to ‘home grown’ Portland as it were. I used to go to the questing Beast in SW Portland for Pool and puppet shows played to tune of Chuck Berry music. It was a gas living here then and now. I’m looking for an old sewing shop on SW 3rd/Madison or a head shop called the Buffalohead Nickle right next door if you see an ad for that, please let me know!
    Thank you,
    Trish

24. I am moved to see this — somewhat as an historian but much more as Howard Waskow’s older brother. He died four years ago, and I continue to deeply miss him and his adventures in Portland and in himself. His tales of the Scribe were among his richest. May these memories of the Scribe and of the Movement in Portland help renew the best energies of our newest generation!

25. Does anyone know whatever happened to Jimmy Beller?

26. Great post. Very informative. It’s look like I am in histroy. Thanks

27. I worked on the Scribe from late 1975 until 1977 or ’78. Over the course of time I was the Production Manager, arts writer and reviewer (film, music and books, once or twice), reporter and managing editor.
    If you (or anyone) has copies, it appears that The Scribe was never collected by any libraries. I have uncoverd a few dozen issues and I would like to help see as much of the corpus collected as possible.
    I can be reached on Facebook Messenger (Manny Frishberg), Skype (manny.frishberg) or in the Greater Seattle area phone directory.

    1. Manny? You still alive and kicking? Hope so. I worked for the Scribe or the Willamette Bridge. I can’t remember the sequence. I also worked for KBOO as a paid classical music announcer for a couple of years, then became a volunteer. I did several things for a small newspaper (no, not senile, but can’t remember which one). I wrote cooking columns, music reviews, and oddly just fell into advertising. (I didn’t like it, but they paid me for that part). Let me know what you remember.
       Thanks!

       1. I remember you well – you did the morning shows, I did the Sunday night early music show. Occasionally we overlapped, like the nights Calhoun and I stayed up all night at the Scribe across the street for layout and ran a tape of my show over and over, all night. We showed up when you got in to turn it off. Sometimes I did whole days at KBOO, but eventually I burned out. Good times, great music.

28. I sold copies of the Willamette Bridge downtown Portland in 1971. I was young and not good at selling! I attended a few never-ending, smoky room meetings at the newspaper. People in the meetings were mostly women, world-wise and sophisticated about politics, very radical, revolutionary and mostly from back East. I was there because I lived in a women’s (liberation) collective in the NE called Madison House and the other six women in the house were somewhat involved with the paper. The other two houses we visited were Red Emma and Sojourner Truth. Madison House was a 7-bedroom Victorian near a bread bakery and across the street from a park. Our rent was $100 a month. We had a poster of Tania in the front entry hall. The retired landlord couple looked nervous when they visited once!
    I had a poem published in the WB aprox July 1971. Would like to see it again.

29. Those of you who are following this thread will be sorry to know that Michael Wells passed away this past summer. His obituary from the Oregonian is here: http://obits.oregonlive.com/obituaries/oregon/obituary.aspx?pid=186157916 . It feels very much like the end of an era. Thanks, Michael, for the inspiration and the good times.

    1. I never knew Michael well, we did not overlap and he and Mary had already started the leather shop when I got to the Scribe, but I met him a few times, including when we have a rouind table talk for the fifth anniversary.
       I am sorry to hear of his passing.

30. The Scribe was a collectively owned and operated paper founded by Michael and Mary Wells who, earlier, had launched the Willamette Bridge. I joined the collective in 1974, and I was with the Scribe as a writer, editor, production guy and anything else that needed doing until 1976, when I left the Scribe, left Portland, headed south to pursue my career as a writer. I really believe the Scribe embodied an idea that has more or less faded out of cultural memory: it belonged to an era that came after the well-known Sixties–hippies, Vietnam War, long hair, riots in the inner cites,etc–and before what people usually think of when they think of the Seventies–hot tubs, yuppies, the faint first traces of Reaganomics, disco and punk… Let’s call thisw forgotten era the Age of Gerald Ford. I’m working on a novel set in Portland of this forgotten era, about a fictional newspaper, called the Rose City Ark, which is based on the Scribe. It’s about six characters–six streams of consciousness–moving through that historical moment. The novel is called Sinking the Ark, and if you’re interested, look for it in about a year. Those of you who remember endless collective meetings in search of “consensus”,, and factions vying to define the paper;s mission will find themselves in familiar territory here.

    1. I was there – worked on the Scribe in 1977-78. Experimented with selling the Scribe on the downtown streets, as a hawker. It was moderately successful, so I promoted this in a meeting. The editor had this to say: “Fuck you.”

    2. Tamim —
       I worked in production at the Scribe when you were writing for it. I went on to write reviews and news, and eventually edited it for about a year. In the decades since, I became a reporter and editor, and now book editor and SF/F author.
       I’d love to see your novel when it is published. If you don’t have a publisher, have your agent contact me. It’s possible I can be of help.

31. Finding this site rather belatedly. Wrote for the Scribe around 77-78. Great incubator for aspiring radical/progressive writers. Quite a barrel of characters. Quite a vibrant environment at the Centenary-Wilbur church building. Several organizations called it home.

32. Hello Everyone! My name is Katherine Richardson Bruna and my father, Austin Harper Richardson, was the pastor at Centenary Wilbur Church, which housed The Scribe offices. I’m embarking on a history of his progressivist preaching and would love to do interviews with anyone who remembers The Scribe and any of the other movements coming out the Centenary building. If you’re interested, please reply to this post and I’ll get in touch!

33. I hawked the Bridge for a few years, even did some illustration for it . No pay except ( I think ) 10 cents out of each quarter sold. I was still in high school, forbidden to get a real job and had no useful skills ( I still don’t ) so I made spending money at least. I was a hippie and that’s what mattered to me then. GREAT TIMES!

34. I moved to Portland in 1974. My boyfriend, Jim Sinkinson, was heavily involved with the Scribe around 1975. Anyone remember him? He was a very intense person, so memories might be mixed.