—by Garrett Dittfurth

Landon Cakes

Tonight the 2011 Major League Soccer season begins, when LA Galaxy, featuring such glamorous international stars as David Beckham, Landon Donovan and Mike Magee, face some team from up north. Kickoff is at 6:30pm (ESPN), which should leave you plenty of time to get out of work (for example) and head to one of Portland's many fine watering holes to watch the game.

Not sure where to watch? Here are a few options that might interest you:

Bitter End Pub [since closed] (1981 West Burnside) - The TA's game-day pub is also a great place to watch a match on TV, whether it's Timbers away, CONCACAF Champions League or MLS. Tuesday nights also feature trivia at Bitter End, so you can get your nerd on while watching Frankie Hejduk go cleats up into nomeansno's face (for example).

Beulahland (118 NE 28th) - You really can't go wrong with Beulahland. For me this is the best place to watch soccer on the east side; they've got a good selection of taps, cheap tallboys and random sody pops, to go along with a nice food menu and a laid back environment for watching Timbers, MLS, EPL, etc. Well hello there, sardine sandwich and pounder of Old German...

4-4-2 (1739 SE Hawthorne) - The new kid on the scene used to be a Bosnian grocery and deli before they turned it into what I'm told is a fantastic soccer pub, with great food (still Bosnian) and a big selection of taps and bottles. What we do, we drink?

Those are just for starters. Portland, as you know, is full of great neighborhood bars, plenty of spots where people gather with their friends to knock back a few and watch a match. Marathon Taverna has always got soccer on the TVs and I loved watching World Cup games there last summer; Triple Nickel Pub has been an east side outpost for TA MLS viewing for a couple years now; both Blitz locations are amenable to soccer; Brooklyn Park Pub is a super cozy little bar in SE; and Slim's and Leisure Pub have been doing duty as North PDX soccer spots. A wealth of options, we has one.

Check out the full list of Official partners and DaveKnows' Portland Soccer Bars site for more ideas, and feel free to let us know in the comments where you'll be watching First Kick tonight.

Enjoy this!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Communications@107ist.org

Mission Accomplished: Timbers Army Season Tickets Sold Out

PORTLAND -- With a month to go before the Portland Timbers’ first home game in Major League Soccer, the Timbers Army has already reached one significant milestone.

On Monday, the Timbers reported that Timbers Army Season Tickets had sold out for the 2011 season. That means there’ll be no place to sit in eight full sections of the North End at PGE Park – not that the Army ever sits during a Timbers match anyway. The eight sections, which will spill over into upper-level sections as well, have room for roughly 3,600 fans. About 500 tickets are being set-aside for day-of-game purchase.

The Timbers partnered with the Army through the 107ist, the team’s independent supporters trust that serves as the business engine of the Timbers Army. A 107ist marketing committee used a combination of special events, social media and videos produced by Army members to promote the tickets and link fans to the club. As is customary with ticket-sales campaigns done by youth teams and non-profit organizations, the team provided a small commission to the 107ist.

"Three-thousand tickets seemed like a steep hill to climb when we took this on," said 107ist President Dave Hoyt. "That we’ve sold out a month before the first home game just shows how ready this city and our fans are for MLS." Figures provided by the club indicate that the team has sold 2,900 full-season Timbers Army tickets, and 200 half-season tickets.

Tickets throughout the stadium have been selling briskly, with the team having already raised the initial cutoff point of 12,000 season-ticket sales.

The Timbers open their season Saturday against defending MLS champion Colorado in Denver. Their first home game will be April 14 against the Chicago Fire.

107ist funds its activities through membership dues and merchandise sales. To learn more, go here 107ist.

&masdh;by Lucas Grzybowski

I had a good time at the 107ist stadium tour this afternoon. As some of you know I've been blogging about the renovation on my personal blog, and I was just at the Park two days ago so I didn't see anything new. But a lot of other people got their first glimpse of the new digs, and had the chance to grill the construction foreman to boot.

It was a nice afternoon at the new/old ball park, which as soon as tomorrow may have a different name, and which one month from tomorrow will host its first ever MLS game. It's almost here!

Thanks again to the Timbers, 107ist and Papa Murphy's for today's tour. Here's a panorama I took on my phone, compared with roughly the same shot from the first stadium tour, in November (click both for big versions):

If you attended a Portland Timbers match in 2010, the chances are pretty good that you saw a table set up in the concourse with a couple volunteers chatting up strangers about the game, handing out chant sheets, and maybe even signing up a few new 107ist members.

We're looking for 107ist volunteers this season to help cover an expanded presence in the stadium to show off what our organization has accomplished and help bring new fans into our group. There are no requirements for how long you've been a fan or whether or not you have an official title. If you want to talk to other Timbers fans about why you're excited to be part of this, that's absolutely what we're looking for.

Things will start moving quickly after Colorado away. We'll start putting up some sign up sheets for shifts in individual home matches, figure out exactly where our tables will be placed (West Stand 107ists are strongly encouraged to volunteer), and maybe even have a volunteer-only meet and greet a week or so before the Chicago home opener to answer your questions and make sure you feel comfortable representing us in the park.

Thanks everyone. RCTID.

US Men's National Team and D.C. United striker Charlie Davies on his recovery and future. It's worth a watch if you have some time.

This is really as formal of an announcement as we will have about the Heritage Cup. We have decided we do not want to participate in this supporter driven tournament as we feel it adds no value to the Cascadia Cup and may actually devalue our historic competition in that it is the same thing +1. We do respect the history that our four clubs share, but aren’t interested in participating in a four way competition at this time.

Below is the answer we have given those who coordinate the Heritage Cup.

While we recognize the effort put into this endeavor, the board of the 107ist (Timbers Army 107 Independent Supporters Trust) do not feel that we want to be involved with the project at this time. Here in the Pacific Northwest we have worked with Seattle and Vancouver fans over the past decade to build support for the Cascadia Cup, and do not feel that the Heritage Cup competition would be distinctly different enough to warrant our participation. If the Tampa Bay Rowdies and rumored resurrection of the Cosmos in NY were to be included we would reconsider this position, and most likely sign on to the Heritage Cup. As our president Dave Hoyt puts it " If there was a Cascadia +3, then I think it could be seen as a legitimately different rivalry cup."

—by Garrett Dittfurth

By now I'm sure most of you have seen the MLS supporters Top 5 MLS all-time tifo. I have to admit I'm scratching my head a lot about including the Charlie Davies display in the top 5.

In no way am I trashing the nice gesture the team from up North made for injured USMNT striker Charlie Davies. It was a great thing to do. How in the hell can a display of 30K printed out pieces of paper paid for by Drew Carey be counted as one of the best tifo displays in MLS history? Drew Carey didn't even think it up as it had already been done 10 days before at the USMNT World Cup Qualifying match in Washington, DC, October 14, 2009.

A very nice gesture to be sure. One of the best in the history of the league...hardly. Anyone have any thoughts?

—by Lucas Grzybowski

Today is Tuesday, which means tonight is Tuesday night (still following me?), and that means Quizzy Trivia at 107ist partner Bitter End Pub.

Some of you may know me from various online forums as Totalnerd (or occasionally Nerdski). This isn't just an empty moniker; I've been using this alias since college, when my friends and I used to get together on Friday nights and read Latin. I'm also a die-hard fan of Jeopardy!, and at one point my obsession was so bad I used to tape episodes (as in magnetic video cassettes to watch later if I couldn't be in front of a TV at 7pm. Trivial Pursuit? Yes, please!

So yeah, I love trivia. With that in mind, it's strange that I've never been a big fan of bar trivia. Either the questions are too esoteric and specific, or people are too competitive (see: David Brent); for whatever reason I just never enjoyed it. So it was a pleasant surprise last week, when I finally made my way to Bitter End for the new weekly trivia, that it was a lot of fun. It's low key, no hyper-competitiveness, and the questions are funny (a frequent theme last week was "Sheen or Gaddafi?"). I played with Team Rectum (I think that's what they were called), who won for the 3rd consecutive week.

I'm definitely going again tonight, and plan to make it a regular Tuesday thing. Rumor has it this week will see the entrance of a Suns of Ricky team into the fray. Get ready to be PWNED, Team Rectum!

The fun starts at 7:01pm, and is hosted by Quiz Mistress par excellence Sabrina Miller. It's free to play, and the prize is $5 in bar cash to each member of the winning team (up to 5 ppl). So grab your 107ist cards and get stuck in, nerds!

Reaction to Kenny Cooper’s stoppage time goal, which gave the Timbers a 2-0 win over sounders in a preseason Cascadia Summit match in Tukwila, WA.

Photo by Craig Mitchelldyer