I went down to the Sisters Of The Road block party yesterday afternoon, hoping to score myself a burger. The line was at least half an hour long, so I just stood round chatting, hoping my patience would see the line dwindle before the food ran out. But the food ran out. Hey ho:SISTERS OF THE ROAD GRILL: I never got to sample its delights…

There was some compensation, however, for hanging around unfed. Apart from talking with numerous people who’d had unfortunate run-ins with Portland’s Rent-a-cop firm, PPI, local freelance photographer and full-time activist Teresa Teater showed up around 6:30. Teater is always good for catching up on the local gossip: She attends pretty much every rally, protest, council hearing and the like, and always has her camera ready. Often she’ll have some unbelievable stories to tell me about things she’s seen, but there’s never proof, so I can’t write about them. Yesterday, she told me she saw Stevie Wonder buying a camera in downtown Portland. Which I’d have thought was some deeply ironic joke, were it not for her having photographic proof!TEATER: “HE’S LIKE THE POPE OF MUSIC!”

“I saw him last Friday at 1:30, coming out of the CameraWorld opposite Office Depot,” she says. “And I ran over there and his minders were trying to shoo me off, but I begged them, and I just begged a girl standing there to take a picture of us with my camera.”

Teater describes Wonder as “the pope of music!” and says she told him: “When I was in an orphanage growing up, I only listened to Tammy Tyrell, Marvin Gaye, and Stevie Wonder.”

“I just told him ‘I want to thank you’,” she said.

Wonder bought an Olympus compact for his daughter, apparently.