Jay Horton

Heather Wagner freely admits she stole the idea behind her product. Wagner is the founder of Portland startup The Cat Throne, which makes a specially widened and textured toilet seat for cats. But the idea came from the product’s intended end user: a housecat. “When I was around 4 years old,” Wagner recalls, “my senior cat—a Siamese named Xanadu —taught herself to go to the bathroom on the toilet. A lot of cats do that. It’s more common than you think.

A few years into the streetscape “diet” that winnowed Foster Road’s four lanes to two, the venerable thoroughfare continues to resist the massive renovations that soon rendered other boulevards in Southeast unrecognizable. Sure, the taxidermy studio and Sunday school supply store have thus far stood their ground, but nightlife developments now veer more Slingshot Lounge than Gun Room.

This story first appeared in the March 12, 2014, edition of WW. In June, Portland will lose a legend. For three decades, the Jiggles sign at exit 289 on I-5 has stood as a tantalizing promise of adult privilege to adolescent males of all ages. It may be difficult to remember now, but Jiggles opened as a drearily normal strip club in 1984 before being forced to surrender its liquor license because of alleged mob ties. Instead of closing, it morphed into an 18-and-over juice bar with topless dancers.