Mayor Funkhouser lights a big tree as his charity fund gets smaller

As darkness descended on Black Friday and a few thousand obliging traditionalists gathered outside Crown Center to wait for the mayor to light his 100-foot Oregon fir tree, a cold breeze carried choral music and other sounds of the season. A tired-looking man in a jacket pocked with the Royals’ logo turned from his perch along a rail near the parking garage and spit hard — thphnh! — into the patch of lawn behind him, just missing a pedestrian. “Oh,” he said, avoiding eye contact. “Excuse me.” That’s how you know it’s Christmastime: The spitters beg your pardon.