We did it! After years of relative stagnation, Portland finally moved the needle on bike commuting. Sure, the city's long-held 6 percent commuting rate was the best in the country (among big cities), but we'd held steady since 2008. No longer. Figures just released by the US Census Bureau suggest thousands more Portlanders commuted by bike in 2014, bringing us up to something like 7.2 percent.

As stoic police and trigger happy chainsawmen moved in on those three Eastmoreland sequoias yesterday, Portland Mayor Charlie Hales' office called an intervention, bringing together neighbors and the developer who wants to kill the century-old trees. It looks like it might work—because one of the creators of South Park is helping bankroll a deal?

Failed Oregon senatorial candidate Monica Wehby has bragged about how her new political action committee, Monica PAC, is going to change the face of Oregon politics. The O took a look at how it's doing that—and found an interesting situation. The PAC is pouring donations not into Republican campaigns, but into the company that manages it, apparently for the development of an opaque software program. There's also a bumbling wine subplot, and a threat of legal action against the paper. All weird. Read it here.

To hear Police Chief Larry O'Dea and Mayor Charlie Hales tell it, Portland's making huge strides under federally mandated police reforms, and a new 90-plus-page status report from the US Attorney's Office confirms it. Read the report, though—even just 10 or 15 pages of it—and it becomes clear it's not as sunshiny as those soundbites suggest. There are big lapses happening still. Some of the PPB's own rules don't conform to its settlement agreement with the US government. Some do, but the agency's not abiding by them. Red flags all over the place, though the US Attorney's office did tell me the city's trying in many ways. Here's a thorough rundown.

Why's affordable housing so hard to come by? According to this Trib story, partly because the strings attached to affordable projects result in larger-than-necessary price tags. Do away with inconveniences like making buildings "green," or giving kids playgrounds, or paying construction workers decently, the thinking goes, and Portland could have much more affordable housing. Ugh.

The Port of Portland's shipping commerce is essentially dead, and that's no good for the Idaho farmers trying to win big in the lentil game. No one ever said the lentil game was gonna be easy, Idaho farmers. Never that.

More lawyering in the tragic crash that killed City Commissioner Amanda Fritz's husband, Steve, last year. Fritz has sued the drivers involved, and now one of those drivers has sued the state.

The latest in the presidential race clown show: Donald Trump pointedly neglected to correct one of his clueless bigot fans when that clueless bigot fan said President Obama is a muslim. People are mad about this, but we hope they're not surprised.

And Hillary Clinton's shade-throwing apparatus backfired, when low key comments attempting to tie Sen. Bernie Sanders to the extreme views of a British politician wound up netting Sanders a cool $1.2 million in donations in just two days.

Have a great weekend, Portland. I'll be on Mount Rainier.

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Oh! And Chopsticks II is closing its doors (at the current location) this weekend. Whatever you sing is your business, but for this week's Karaoke Friday, I'm issuing a challenge—a song that I've never been able to pull off to anyone's satisfaction, but which I think could be a life-changer in the right hands. I'm depending on you.