In a bizarre twist, Willamette Week managed to scoop us on a story about ourselves—specifically, me:

Portland Mercury reporter Scott Moore is moving on. The hirsute cyclist starts next Tuesday as the new spokesman for Secretary of State Bill Bradbury.

Who knew they’d care enough about me to carve out four lines in their paper? At any rate, I’m happy they mentioned it, though I’d rather the news have come from us first (check my column when it hits the streets this afternoon/tomorrow morning).

Normally, I wouldn’t do something so entitled as to make a big deal out of my departure, but, hell, I’m going to take the opportunity to talk about my proudest/fondest moments of the past two years. Those are after the jump, to spare those of you who don’t have a stomach for my nostalgia.

In a nutshell, though, I’m immensely proud of the work that we’ve done at the Mercury since my colleague Amy Ruiz and I came on board. I think we caught the city—especially the skeptics—off guard from day one with our dogged persistence and attention to stories and details that were being ignored by other outlets. And though there are still Portlanders who believe that the Mercury is dedicated solely to hipster rumor-mongering, I know for a fact that we created one of the most principled news rooms around, with a hard-to-match dedication to increasing civic engagement. Knowing that the section will still be in the hands of the talented Mrs. Ruiz makes my transition easier.

(And, in case you’re wondering, no, the Mercury will not get preferential treatment from me when I’m on the other side of their phone calls.)

Now, on with the clip show!

These are a handful of my favorite memories from the past two years--in no particular order. I won't bore you with the journalistic nitty-gritty details, but with the more "extracurricular" perks of working for the Mercury:

1. Covering Election Night Parties: Probably no surprise, but I've always enjoyed being in the midst of the political buzz (you can read "buzz" in any number of ways) that surrounds Election Night parties. I've got a particular fondness for the memory of the May 2006 primary, riding my bike in a convoy led by sheriff candidate Paul van Orden from Erik Sten's party at the northwest Lucky Lab to a pick-up party at Acme.

2. The Portland Mercury Civic Clean-Up Crew: It started as a joke, but then snowballed into one of the strangest, most exhilarating displays of civic engagement I've ever seen--and don't let anyone tell you it was a "vigilante mob." A hundred or so Portland residents took to the streets along the Rose Parade route removing the duct tape eyesores left by entitled would-be parade watchers. "Whose sidewalks? Our sidewalks!" echoed through my head for a week afterward. We made a lot of friends with the TV news folks that night.

3. Building A Case For Ending The Drug Free Zones--And Winning: Criticism of the DFZs--based on constitutional due process flaws and apparent racism in their enforcement--had been going on for years before I showed up. But our dogged coverage of the policy and the failed process around renewing it, and our continuing analysis of the exclusion numbers forced the mayor's office to (finally) have an independent third party analyze the figures from a reluctant police bureau. And guess what: The report showed that we had been right all along, and the mayor had no choice but to kill the DFZs and come up with a more effective and more fair anti-drug policy.

4. Following Petition Circulators Who Were Paying Homeless People Per Signature: On a July afternoon, we got a tip from someone saying that homeless men and women were being paid per signature--in violation of state law--for gathering signatures on a handful of campaigns. We spent the next two days following some of the alleged offenders around downtown, observing the exchanges for ourselves.

5. Best Of 3 am: For our Best Of issue in 2006, Matt Davis and I wandered the streets of northwest looking for trouble--and by trouble, I mean the "best of 3 am." I stuck my arm in a pond full of algae trying to catch very small fish, and we scouted out the best place to hunt for rats in Waterfront Park (hint: everywhere in Waterfront Park). It was ludicrous, and probably a tad dangerous, but a great way to spend a cool summer evening.

6. Biking Through Downtown With Tom Miller And Scott Bricker: In order to find the city's most dangerous intersections for cyclists, I enlisted the help of Sam Adams' chief of staff, Tom Miller, and BTA director Scott Bricker. I don't get a number of opportunities to ride in a group, and this was with two of the most important bike leaders in the city. Their expertise opened my eyes to dangers that I didn't know existed, but that are familiar to people who ride those routes. Also, it was pretty damn fun.

7. Rant At The City Club: "Do you want to sit on stage at the Governor Hotel and deliver a rant, and then argue with Victoria Taft and Jack Ohman?" they asked. "Would I ever!" I responded. At the event, I spent a few minutes chastising Portland for being too damn nice, and then debating any number of things with Taft. The video was still running on cable access every once in a while as of a couple months ago--I know because I heard more than a few instances of "Hey, I was flipping through the channels the other night and, man, your face showed up on the TV. Weird." Indeed.

8. Partnering With The Bus Project: Considering that our missions are identical--encouraging more civic engagement--our partnership with the Bus Project on forums and Debate Club was an obvious fit. Taking politics off of the page and into the community has been great. Plus, I got to meet all the folks at the Bus, who've become good friends.

9. The Mercury All-Star Band: It's no secret that Mercury Editor Wm. Steven Humphrey is a born showman, so it was an honor sharing the stage with him as part of the paper's all-star band. Our first performance was covering the oeuvre of '70s glam pop band Sweet for the paper's seventh anniversary; the latest was covering Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend" at Pizzazz. So, you can probably kinda get what the band's about. FUN.

10. A Date With The Women Of Willamette Week: Every year, the paper auctions off a date with The Men of the Mercury, and the winner of the 2005 auction was, ironically enough, The Women of Willamette Week. We dropped a bunch of quarters at Ground Kontrol, ate some Voodoo Donuts, and had a helluva time. It was a nice example of the fact that even though we work at rival papers, we're all just human beings. Rodney King would have been proud.

11. Getting Called By Billy Mitchell: After previewing the film King of Kong with film editor Erik Henriksen, I wrote a blog post titled "I HATE BILLY MITCHELL," ranting about what a total jerk the villain of the documentary is. A few mornings later, I arrived at work to two--TWO!--voicemails from Billy, the first asking me to call him back so we could chat, and the second one making sure I hadn't tried calling while his phone was off. I called him back a couple days later and had a surprisingly pleasant conversation with him. Contrary to how he comes off in the film, on the phone he seemed to be about as normal as can be--his main concerns were with running his hot sauce business and getting his kids to and from school on time.

12. KATU’s Blogger Meetup: For some reason, despite us being neighbors, KATU neglected to invite us to their "blogger meetup." After a lot of crying on our part, they corrected, and decided to invite us after all. Sure, every blogger in the city was half convinced that KATU was trying to gather us in on place in order to kill us, but it actually turned out to be a shockingly fun time. I got to meet Steve Dunn (who's totally my BFF now), drank a ton of free wine, pretended to blow my brains out at the KATU news desk, and guilt tripped a certain someone who works for a conservative radio station. Plus, I got to meet my favorite Portland bloggers--in real life!

13. Crashing Progressive Happy Hours: Once a month, there's this little get together called Progressive Happy Hour, where political staffers and consultants get together to gab over drinks. Obviously, I knew I had to start crashing it in order to make connections with the people behind the people. Naively, I underestimated just how uncomfortable a bunch of people would get by having a journalist in the room (whoops!), but I didn't let it stop me. There's nothing like having a pleasant conversation with someone over drinks and hearing the words "this is off the record" before every sentence. Good times.