Women lag in bike riding and business
Every year, the Interbike trade show in Las Vegas sponsors a seminar about the female bike consumer. “It’s always the same material — how women have the buying power in the U.S.,” says Joan Martocello, a manager at Bike Gallery, a Portland bike store chain. “Then you go into bike shops and still see the girlie posters.” Even in cycle-friendly Portland, says Martocello, the male-dominated bike shop environment “is quite a bit intimidating for women.”

Venture capital investment in Oregon leaped 114.5% in 2010.
Whatever you do, don’t call Barcelona’s No. 1 Mole Poblano a chocolate sauce, says Roberto Riquelme, one of three partners at Barcelona Sauces, a year-old company based in Bend.
Should budding entrepreneurs strike out on their own? Or is it more effective to pool resources with like-minded business owners? That was the dilemma facing the “micro mercantes” tamale vendors, a group of low-income Latinas who participate in a microenterprise program sponsored by Hacienda Community Development Corporation.
For decades, people have been sweating and stretching as an instructor leads the way (think Jazzercise, step aerobics or Jane Fonda). As long as misery loves company, it seemed group fitness classes would endure. But in the past few years — since the recession — group classes have become even more in vogue, a trend that’s buoyed a Portland-based startup.