Bits & Pieces

Published 12:00 am Thursday, August 9, 2018

‘Street Seats’

Design Museum Portland, along with Portland General Electric and the World Trade Center, are opening “Street Seats: Urban Benches for Vibrant Cities,” a six-month outdoor design exhibition of sustainable and innovative urban furniture.

It’s a reimagination of the public bench; designs from Portland, California, New York, Massachusetts, Iowa, Italy, Gibraltar, the United Kingdom, Finland and Hong Kong were selected for the exhibit.

It opens 5-7 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 9, at the World Trade Center, 121 S.W. Salmon St.

For more: http://www.designmuseumportland.org/streetseats.

Blockbuster movie

It’s a movie about a movie business that has a lone movie store remaining.

Blockbuster Video has dwindled to one outlet in Bend.

And now a Bend production company, Pop Motion Pictures, is raising money through Kickstarter to make the movie “The Last Blockbuster.”

The director is Taylor Morden.

“When we started working on this documentary last year, there were about a dozen Blockbuster video locations still standing. Now there is just one,” he says. “As movie lovers and physical media enthusiasts, we took it upon ourselves to uncover the story of why. What makes Bend, Oregon, and this store in particular, so special. It’s a fun and uplifting story and, frankly, we think the world needs more like that these days.”

Morden and fellow filmmaker Zeke Kamm have led a team that has interviewed scores of people involved with the Bend Blockbuster — owner, manager, employees, patrons.

For more: http://www.facebook.com/lastblockbustermovie.

On to the live shows

The McMinnville sibling band We Three has played two original songs and received high praise from judges Simon Cowell, Heidi Klum, Mel B and Howie Mandel during the first two rounds of Season 13 of “America’s Got Talent,” and now they’ve advanced to the upcoming live rounds.

Bowling for Rhinos

The Oregon Zoo puts on the fundraiser for the 29th year, helping support conservation efforts for rhinoceroses.

It takes place 3:30-6 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 11, at KingPins Family Entertainment Center, 2725 S.W. Cedar Hills Blvd., in Beaverton. Cost is $20 for adults and $10 for kids.

Bowling for Rhinos has raised more than $7 million since 1990. Proceeds go to conservancies in Kenya, India and Indonesia that work to protect five extant species of rhinoceros — black, white, Indian, Javan and Sumatran — and provide habitat for hundreds of endangered plant and animal species.

“The number of rhinos left in the world is critically low,” says Anne Lauerman, a keeper in the zoo’s Africa section and Bowling for Rhinos chairperson.

Oregon Zoo is preparing to break ground on an expansion of the zoo’s rhino habitat. Zuri and Ruka, the two eastern black rhinos that lived at the Oregon Zoo, have been moved to the Kansas City Zoo to ensure they have a good home during construction. The new habitat is set to open in 2020.

For more: http://www.oregonzoo.org.

Wrestlers returning

A heads-up: Superstar wrestlers return to the Moda Center for “WWE Smackdown Live,” Tuesday, Oct. 2.

Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, Aug. 10, at rosequarter.com. Top characters expected to appear are AJ Styles, Jeff Hardy, Shinsuke Nakamura, Samoa Joe, Asuka and Carmella.

$1 membership

Oregon Signal, the multimedia arts center in Portland, has put into effect a “radically inclusive” membership program.

For a minimum annual fee of $1, Open Signal members now receive benefits that include access to the 10,000-square-foot facility on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, free training and networking events, and a customized membership card.

Membership will be required at Open Signal as of Jan. 1. For more: http://www.opensignalpdx.org.