Portland Monthly is a magazine that popped up a year ago beside checkstands in Zupan's, Market of Choice and other hoity-toity grocery stores. I'd always written it off as a localized Vogue or a lame New Yorker imitation, allowing my periodical prejudices to push me away from what it had to offer.

I was sitting around the laundromat last week when my eyes fell on the November issue. Having forgotten to bring along a book and faced with a choice between PM and the June edition of Modern Bride, I started flipping through its pages.

My suspicions were immediately confirmed. The magazine was filled with Vogue-esque articles on dinner parties and fashion dos and don'ts. Eleven pages alone were filled with models lounging around in the latest Saks Fifth Avenue offerings. But what was this? A feature on how Willy Week reporter Nigel Jaquiss went about yanking the skeletons out of Neil Goldschmidt's closet? A two-page article on the Mallory Hotel sale? An article on the leper colony that once sat where the Oregon Zoo currently resides?

Somewhere amidst all the fluff were sharply-written articles with snazzy layout worthy a glossy national weekly. While I have no interest in the "Pret a Portland" column, which points readers towards businesses that sell $12 bars of soap and pink t-shirts for dogs, a feature on Las Vegas' de-evolution into its seedy days of yore was a great read.

So I came away with a different point of view and learned a valuble life leason worthy of the Berenstein Bears. If Portland Monthly ever ditches the content typically found in banal hotel guides, I might even subscribe. As it is now, I'll only flip through it in Rich's Cigar Store. Or steal it from the laundromat.